In May 2010, the WISHES mobility portal was launched for higher education institutions within the WISHES Networking Days 2010. Since June 2010 the supporting institutions have access to the WISHES mobility portal to upload their data to the portal and optimize their presentations according to the expressed students’ needs.

The WISHES mobility portal is set up by a consortium consisting of 9 institutions (see partner). Furthermore, a growing number of currently over 200 supporting institutions already ensured to benefit from WISHES from its very beginning. (see WISHES network).

WISHES is a European project and is as such co-financed by the European Commission under the former Action 4 of the Erasmus Mundus Programme. In detail 65% are financed by the Commission, 35% by the Consortium.

Via the WISHES mobility portal students have got a central source of information to find interesting study and work offers in Europe. WISHES provides well structured information based on the expressed needs of 4.000 students. Therewith, it highly reduces the efforts for students to find the best matching university and/or enterprise for their time spent abroad.

This is realized by the WISHES online community that is included within the WISHES mobility portal. Each student has got the possibility to create his/her own user profile and can then start to communicate with other students. That’s how contacts towards former and/or future international students can be easily established and obstacles to mobility are reduced. Thus, students can already find friends/roommates etc before their first day at the new university which in result strengthens their decision to go abroad.

WISHES is based on the Bologna Process. This means:

• All universities in Bologna countries can take part in WISHES provided they possess a valid Erasmus University Charter (EUC) (European Countries) or are listed in the UNESCO-Database for higher education.
• European standard documents such as the ECTS course catalogue form the basis for the presentation of the HEIs in WISHES
• Bologna Tools such as ECTS are consequently used in WISHES

The study-in-europe.org website provides the user with general information about the country one would like to study in. WISHES on the other hand offers detailed information about the particular university one is interested in – including everything one wants to know about the future place to study/work and to live: where to find suitable accommodation, which courses to participate in etc. Furthermore, WISHES offers the opportunity to start a social network and find friends even before the first day in the new country by the “WISHES online community”.

The WISHES project is still a relatively new project which was approved in October 2008. It was presented on several international conferences and the interest attracted is enormous. However, up until now, not all European HEIs know of WISHES and thus, did not yet have any possibility to announce their interest. In case your own institution is not yet listed in our mobility portal and you would like to change this, please feel free to get in touch with us by means of the following contact form.)

All state-approved universities of Bologna countries are eligible to be listed within WISHES provided they do have a Erasmus University Charter (EUC) (European institution) respectively are listed in the UNESCO Database on higher education (non.European institutions).

Find a list of all Bologna countries here.

The EU funding will last for the first three years. After these three years WISHES needs to be self-financed. However, at any time, WISHES will always offer a basic membership free of charge.

Actually, all you need are only basic computer skills and an internet connection. To be a bit more precise, the WISHES mobility portal is based on Typo3 / ZEND combination enriched with a highly usable front end editing system. This means that whoever sets up a university respectively enterprise website does not (!) need to have any skills and/or experience in the IT field!

The process of becoming a supporting institution of the WISHES project is easy: Simply contact us by means of this online form, receive the Letter of Intent and send it back to us. A structured website template will then be created for your institution to present your offers. Furthermore, after having uploaded your offers, you surely would like to make them known. Thus, we do also require you to promote your individual WISHES website within your own networks. Marketing material for this will be made available.